Antibulli Swimming

Antibulli Swimming is a tool that makes it easy for swimming coaches to build team spirit and prevent bullying in children’s swimming.

Photo: Danish Swimming Federation

How do we welcome new swimmers into our club and our teams?How do we create team spirit through group exercises in a sport that is often pursued individually?And as swimming coaches, what should we know about children’s well-being?

These are some of the questions that swimming coaches are likely to ask themselves and each other when they get involved with Antibulli Svømning. The project involves two key elements: a website containing knowledge, activities and exercises aimed at swimming coaches and increasing the focus on well-being in coaching programmes.

The aim of Antibulli Svømning is to promote team spirit and combat bullying in children’s swimming.

The reasoning behind it is that we now know that the cause of bullying lies in the dynamics of the children’s groups themselves, and that we can prevent bullying when we strengthen children’s sense of solidarity and tolerance of one another.

Antibulli Svømning is being piloted in 10 selected clubs in Denmark during 2019. We are evaluating the clubs’ experiences of Antibulli Svømning on an ongoing basis, so that we can adapt the project before offering it to all Danish swimming clubs at some point in 2020.

Antibulli Svømning is the result of a collaboration between The Mary Foundation, the Danish Swimming Federation and TrygFonden.

While the collaboration is new, the idea behind it is not:

“Back in 2013 we discovered that one in every eight children had stopped participating in a leisure activity because they were not thriving or they experienced bullying. We wanted to do something about that. So we initially directed our attention at well-being in children’s football, in collaboration with Save the Children Denmark and the Danish Football Union (DBU). Then we moved on to handball, where we teamed up with Mikkel Hansen and his MH24 foundation. We are pleased to now be able to use our experiences to make a difference in swimming clubs as well. Because a positive team spirit doesn’t just happen merely as a result of children turning up voluntarily. It requires a concerted effort.”

Facts about

SwimmingThe Danish Swimming Federation has 295 member clubs.150,000 children, from infants to young adults, take swimming lessons in Danish swimming clubs every year.

Antibulli SvømningAntibulli Svømning combines experiences from anti-bullying and well-being initiatives with experiences from the swimming world, and consists of practical advice and exercises to use during training. The materials are free and will be readily available to all swimming clubs via antibulli.dk once the programme has been tested and improved during 2019. Coaches will be able to access the mobile-friendly website and select the specific exercises and activities that fit the particular needs of their teams.

The bullying perspective underpinning AntibulliAntibulli is based on the new perspective on bullying which defines it as a group phenomenon that affects or damages not only the specific individuals who are bullied, but actually impacts all the children in the group.The prevention of and solution to bullying must therefore also be pursued through working with the whole group of children – as opposed to just the bullies and the victims. Bullying is less likely to arise in teams where positive values and a positive culture dominate. Antibulli is based on the values: tolerance, respect, care and courage.